If anything, the ship is better able to withstand a move today than a decade ago, Rowsom said. By 1992 the Navy had condemned it, so when Vane Brothers floated it away in 1996 for a nearly three-year restoration, Betsy Hughes worried that the ship might break apart and sink.
Then, as now, the towing company's point man was Jim Demske. He will stand on the Constellation's deck as pilot, coordinating every move by radio with McCluskey, another Constellation veteran, on the tug.
"Fortunately, most of these trips have been - let me knock on wood here - pretty routine," Demske said. That has been true of quick turnarounds to let the ship weather evenly, as well as a more ambitious float to Annapolis in 2004 for 150th birthday.
"When it's uneventful," he said, "it's a great trip."
The diciest part is getting the Constellation out of its Pier One slip near the Harborplace pavilions. Because it's tucked between the pier and pilings, 25 to 30 line handlers will have to pull - or "warp" - the ship halfway out of its berth by hand.
"Then," Rowsom said, "we'll get the tug hooked up on the hip on the port quarter." Translation: The tug will be tethered to the ship's rear left side. Three lines will bind tug and sloop. A second tugboat will be there on standby.
For McCluskey, this job is a big departure from the norm. The ship's hull is made of wood, for one thing, whereas the barges he normally transports have steel shells.
"Everything else we move you can grab and manhandle," he said. "Grabbing that, it's like a bull in a china shop. You'll rip it apart."
Yesterday morning, McCluskey made a typical run from Fairfield over to Locust Point. His tug's mighty engines roared and its throttle hissed as he maneuvered into position and linked up with a 196-foot-long oil barge.
"We're married to this thing right now," McCluskey said. He pointed to twin lines winched to the barge as tightly as a wedding band. "It's part of us."
For a half-hour, he motored the tug under cotton-ball clouds before unhitching the barge at Domino Sugar. There a hose pumped oil from the barge into the fuel tank of a cargo ship unloading raw sugar. McCluskey would return later to pick up the empty barge.
This regular coupling and uncoupling of tug and barge is what McCluskey does year-round. But today he will add extra padding called sea cushions to the 65-foot tug's fender in preparation for the delicate assignment.
